this weekend was labor intensive, i mean really, seriously.

work work worked all week, then saturday visited my mom to start working on a truck project. i need new door panels, mine are gone, and it is loud, so so very loud in the truck.

got some wallboard, and made patterns of my doorpanels.

then cut them out in about two seconds with a nice jigsaw.
i'll take more pics when i work on it again, i got so sidetracked.
went to an awesome cookout hangout party for alicias graduation, then came home oh so tired.
next morning got up bright n early and cleaned house. then went for a secret adventure.

lets just say it involved carrying these bricks

up this hill

and that it was hot and humid, my lard, so humid
i was sweating bullets. missiles even, you could say.
after that i couldn't move or use my hands, so i relaxed until i made a quick pasta salad to take to a birthday cookout.
it was great! so fun!
we sacrificed babies

and video chatted with friends on vacation

and it was just so much fun! i went home early, ready for a really busy jam packed day monday
i jumped out of bed first thing monday and ran right into the garden with my cup of coffeee. i HAD to plant my veggies, they were getting too big to be in baby pots on the side porch.

i made some trellaces from sticks i found in the alley

i got so paranoid that they were poison ivy covered because of the little hairs on them, so i washed my arms and hands a lot. um, so good so far.

i made four all together, two for two types of beans and two for three types of tomatos.

and i got pretty much everything in the ground! some peppers are still to small to put out, but they have a spot waiting for em.
i was supposed to go see the pool filled up at pats house, but after the 9am-4pm in the garden, i was hurting too bad to move. lets just say i have new fancy tan lines, ew.
i was ready for bed early.
some random phone call kept me up though, how bizarre.
just some nosy friends, wanting to talk.

so here it is, today, and the moped rally is this weekend! i still have a lot to finish and do. woowoo but i only work a few days this week.

fallen soldier

The Macho Man died today. He had a heart attack (I would've forcasted that one back in the early 90's, but I dunno about today) while driving in Florida (OF COURSE he lived in florida) and drove into a tree and died.

This dude was the bossman of wrestling, my dads favorite sunday morning schtick, when I was a little kid. He clearly had a major influence on my outfits and street style later in life. Bummer town, dude.


Please, go snap into a slim jim later in honor of your homeboy, Randy Savage.
OOOOOOHHHHHH YEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

well pie crust dough babies sure are different kids than pizza crust dough babies!

you can't knead it much at all, you have to barely mix it, you have to let it "rest" all the time, i mean seriously pie! you so lazy! pizza dough rests, sort of, but it is chemically reacting the whole time! growing up, getting bigger.
anyway, my hands were too busy for photos.

i've never made my own pie dough, aside from simple crusts like graham cracker or whatever.

but it came out okay, looks wise. not the most perfect, but i'm not that stressed.

and it came out delicious. mulberries are awesome. delicious and FREE. i just have to walk a few blocks down to the park to pick em. no bigs.

maybe if i can finish up the pie i'll make tarts? i think i'll be sick of mulberries by then.

what do you do with all the leftover pie crust corners anyway?

eh this weekend was too rainy. i had things i wanted to get done, but got hijacked by shopping adventures and general lack of interest. feelin real weird this weekend, i'll just leave it at that.
it would be sunny, then dark and rain, they sunny and horribly humid...in the morning on sunday or something i found my brussel sprouts covered in the most perfect dew drops.

i mean, c'mon! how purdy is that? perfect little round droplets on the stem tips of each leaf. nature, you so fancy.
the irises all started blooming, the ones from caitlyn.

i was expecting purple, so yellow was a really cool suprise.
also found another awesome click beetle.

beetles be creepin!

we were driving on some errand, i think to go buy a lawnmower part one, and passed the Skittles car. I love these dudes. theres a car club in town that is full of folks that customize their hoopties to different food or candy themes. so good. who's got the twinkies car, thats what i wanna know.

we were shopping at southern states for seeds and found that they had cats on sale. man it was really tempting, for $4.99 each cat would come with a complimentary basket. you just can't beat that kind of deal.
i walked the dogs to the park at one point and realized all the mulberry trees were full full full of ripe berries. made cobbler yesterday, and am makin pie tonight. maybe we can talk about it tomorrow with pictures...

went on a big adventure exploring, found some really rad secret things. i'm stoked on my neighborhood more and more, just wish my friends lived closer.


stu's birthday was yesterday, we celebrated with tacos and many desserts.

i wish i had been hungrier! shit!

this cake was so good...german chai chocolate? i can't quite remember what type of chocolate, but mah gad. so good.

the firepit flooded with all this dern rain, so we can't even have a fire. gad, will nothing exist that can cheer me up!!!!

hrm. hopefully i will just have an easy week and everyone will be nice and it will be great. lets just see about that....

saturday after work i came home to clean gutters and nearly clean front garden area. i walked dottie, got chased by a black wolf, then put on workin' clothes and joined the landscaping party.
i found this awesome cat turd.

siiiike. its probably a sphynx moth chrysalis! wait, coccoon? no, chrysalis i think. anyway, it was oozing fluid so i put it back where i found it.
we raked and hauled all the crappy red painted mulch out of the bushes, and cut down the daffodills, and i found this beetle too.

he was really cool, until he soaked my hand in this godawful smelling invisible stink. so my hand stunk for the rest of the day.
we dumped the yard trash at the dump, then i went to a birthday cookout where i forgot to take any photos at all.
the next day i woke up and we went to yesterday's, this little mom n pop diner we've been meaning to check out. it was awesome, they have a dish called the four deuce, which is 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 bacons, and 2 sausages. it did not blow me up! the indian couple that owned it came around to the tables and chatted with everyone except us. the check was from a chinese resturant, but thats cool, breakfast was really good and our intestines didn't die!

came home ready to do some serious sewing.

it was so nice outside though that i was having a hard time justifying sitting inside! so naturally instead i decided to have a pool party.

there was a lot of anger over control of the pool...dottie would get really really mad at egon when he tried to get in it. shes so grouchy.

don't worry, egon let it roll.

all that swimming led to wild running, even idle got in on it.

we decided, in lieu of the amazing weather, to build our firepit like we'd been talking about. andrew got to digging.

the neighbors behind us had dumped all their sidewalk slabs in the alley behind our house, so we decided to try to use them. i measured ones that were most similar in shape and started hauling them into the yard while andrew dug more.

um, they were massively heavy and really scratchy, so touching them just in general sucked. but i did it anyway!

the digging continued, because we needed a hole that was almost three feet deep.
the dogs were really great helpers the whole time, they specialize in standing right where you are throwing dirt.

we measured out some trajectory.

and realized we still needed to make it deeper, SHIT!

by this time we were just digging wet clay, it was heavy and stupid. we dug a trench in the hole to lay in the first slab.

at this point, the dogs had pretty much stopped helping. thanks a lot, guys.

first slab in, we really needed to remove another six inches or so of horrible clay.

clay is like, the coolest. it sticks to your shoes so your shoes get slippery and heavy and they fall off your feet constantly, and your gloves get heavy and soggy, and it coats your shovel so your shovel is EXTRA HEAVY so oh my god your arms that already hurt start going NUMB for cryinoutloud.
so we were making progress, even though we were really tired. dottie was being extremely rude to mr. idle, and idle was SO EMBARASSED.

she is in heat, it was an accident, i forgot to get her fixed and then BAM! she's creepy and doing things like that all the time. its almost over, don't worry, and then she will get her tubes tied.

so we got the two side panels in the hole, and were ready for the fourth and final piece after more digging, leveling, and cursing.
so oh, GUESS WHAT? the final piece didn't fit. so we chiseled it with a mini sledgehammer and a piece of rebar until it DID fit, gaddammit!

at that point we realized that lowering and moving the slabs in the hole was way chiller when you used 2x4s for leverage, so that was cool. we had things wedged and propped every which way.

and then magically, finally, we were finished.

we were scared that after all that work, that the pit wouldn't breathe properly so we really needed to give it a test run. we invited some friends to come by, how disappointing would it be if the firepit sucked?

well it just worked great.

we rolled logs around so we had a summer camp style setup, and had a rad night filled with s'mores and jokes.

i brought beds out for the dogs, and they all napped by the fire.

this was the start of a summer of many many campfires and grillouts in the pit.

last night we cooked hotdogs on it, and they were DELICIOUS. just you wait until we get a big grate to go on top, then its SERIOUS BUSINESS.